From Publishers Weekly
Wittlinger (Hard Love) convincingly creates 10 distinct teen voices, each of which takes a turn narrating a chapter. While the chapters offer readers only a glimpse of each character, several of them feature in the other teens' accounts, and bittersweet, even piercing musings run through many of the narratives ("It's as if my emotions are twice the size of normal people's," says one character, pained by unrequited love. "I'm the Arnold Schwarzenegger of sensitivity"). The vignettes rally around a rather tenuous theme--everyone in Scrub Harbor is caught up in a war over the town's name. The wealthy population, the "Follys," wants to change it to the more elegant Folly Bay, hoping to add value to their real estate; the poorer families, the "Scrubs," want to maintain their traditions. Yet the teens' cogent reflections fortify the volume. They reveal what runs deeper than their "Folly" or "Scrub" moniker. The dialogue can feel like forced teen-speak in spots ("You talk like a frigging moron. Get a life, why don'tcha," the football star yells at his younger brother), but readers will likely respond to the realism of both the characters and their dilemmas. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-A subtle and completely realistic novel told in multiple voices. What starts out as a quest to change a small town's name turns into personal journeys of self-discovery for 10 teens. The ongoing debate about which name is best for the town, Scrub Harbor or Folly Bay, lightly overlays the main story line, while the characters struggle to hold their lives together and figure out who they really are. One boy faces the fact that he is gay and chooses to "come out" via a poem published in the school literary magazine, while his football-star jock of an older brother is forced to deal with being irrevocably linked to his brother. An angry girl thaws with the help of a Brazilian exchange student, who in turn realizes that the language barrier helps rather than hinders his understanding of humans in general, and himself in particular. A transferring senior realizes that he isn't the popular boy he used to be at his old school, and must reinvent himself to find his place in Scrub Harbor. The fact that these teens are all struggling to find out who they are, and that everybody is constantly in flux, becomes the main theme that links all of these seemingly unconnected narrative threads together. The teenagers are compelling, and there's more depth to them and the story than readers might expect from the simplistic title.
Linda Bindner, formerly at Athens Clarke County Library, GA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
